The Soul of Amity Park
by LettdViolet
Summary: Mythological AU taken a bit farther - A witch Sam, werewolf Tucker, and almost-alien Danny discover a problem with the magical artifact that keeps Amity Park’s magic from ripping apart reality. They have to find it and help it before it’s too late.
1. 1. The Exposition

Hello! :D This is a definite AU fic for the Phic Phight, based on a prompt by Cyroclastic. I have an outline for this entire thing, but April came and kicked my writing time (as always seems to happen during these things, unfortunately), so I haven't quite written half of it so far. (i.e. I have 10 scenes plus a prologue and epilogue planned, and little less than 5 written.)

Honestly, this is a very unusual story for me. I do enjoy reading AUs, but I definitely do not write dramatic AUs like this. It's been challenging, which, I will not lie, is also a reason I didn't get as much as I hoped done this month. But I am excited about it! I'm going to keep writing and hopefully keep ahead of the update schedule (once a week, starting next Friday.)

Okay, story-wise, the prompt is thus: "Mythological AU where Sam's a witch and Tucker's a werewolf, the two help guide Danny through the secret world of the supernatural, fending off threats and figuring out his newfound powers." I went in a bit of a different direction for this, which you'll probably discover shortly. Apologies for the long A/N and I hope I can finish this!

* * *

The unfamiliar, glowing man was looking haggard after too many run-ins with Danny's weapons. Well, technically they were his _parents_' weapons, but Danny had done his best to disguise that fact. There was no reason to let anybody think that he was stealing from them… even if he was.

"You poor, poor ignoramus," the glowing man said, straightening his burnt purple tie and doing his best to sound condescending. Danny scowled, a blaster trained on the man's head as they floated a dozen feet above the shopping district. People ran around under them, trying to get out of blasting range. The man, who had introduced himself as the Executive, shook his head sadly.

"I know enough, thank you," Danny retorted with a snap. He pulled the trigger, knocking the Executive down onto the roof of a craft store with a blast of green light. Danny lit on the concrete a moment later, his hands pulling out the thermos with practiced ease.

The Executive looked up from where he had risen to his knees. His face was twisted. "Your knowledge of Crescentia is laughably basic, little one."

"I don't need to know Crescentia, I know Earth." Danny pulled the top off the thermos and aimed it.

"Ah, but you don't," the Executive replied with malicious glee, speaking faster when he saw the thermos begin to glow. His voice strained as he was dragged into the vortex. "If you did, you'd see the _havoc your parents are_ \- " And he was gone, compressed into the small thermos that Danny knew was uncomfortable but nowhere near deadly.

"My parents are smart," he told the container firmly, shaking it a little (as if that would do anything.) Even while he said that, though, a thread of doubt crept into his mind. His parents studied Crescentia, but they called it the Ghost Zone. They built weapons to fight and capture the Crescentians, weapons that worked, but they called themselves ghost hunters. Crescentians were just like Earthen humans, personality-wise, it was just… most of them had a grudge. A big one. There were plenty of nice Crescentians out there, but those weren't the ones that took the opportunity to come to Earth in the first place. So it was that the entire town of Amity Park and its resident "ghost" experts assumed that every glowing being was out to get them. Danny lifted into the air, intent on finding a nice, safe alley to turn back into something more human.

A ball of bright green, the color of Crescentia, flashed worryingly close, disturbing Danny's thoughts. He flinched and made sure the thermos was clipped securely to his belt before whipping around to face the attack.

Just his luck. It was his parents.

"You're not getting away this time, ghost boy!" his mom cried, peering through the scope of a rifle. She was hanging out of the sunroof of the family van, a large RV thing that was outfitted with probably more weaponry than the White House and the Pentagon combined. Her hood was up, covering her eyes with mirrored red goggles, supposed to keep ghosts from hypnotizing her. Danny was glad - he wasn't really in the mood to see his mother's soft eyes turn hard and cold as she looked at him. Not today.

Danny laughed awkwardly, waited a second, then - "Bye," he said, suddenly zipping off. He heard the van following him via the streets, his parents shouting insults, but it wasn't the first time that he'd had to outrun them… well, outfly them, anyway. He didn't turn his weapons on them, though it would have been much simpler to blow out a tire or something. They just misunderstood, and that's the only reason they still chased him.

When he'd lost the van, a combination of turning invisible and flying over things that definitely weren't streets, Danny landed near a warehouse not too far from one of the freeways. He leaned up against the brick wall, holding the stitch in his side and breathing hard. Why couldn't they just leave him alone? He was _helping_, for goodness sake.

Someone was coming down the alleyway. Their footsteps weren't quiet on the pavement, which gave Danny time to straighten up and let his appearance revert back to human. It wasn't as difficult now as it had been a month ago, thankfully. He was still panting, but that could easily be explained away, as he really _had_ been running away.

The someone turned the corner, her lined face disapproving and her callused hands holding a well-used blaster. She wore an official-looking uniform, kind of like a police outfit, only completely black and with runes embroidered on the edges. Her red eyes took in Danny's appearance, all six feet of a totally normal eighteen-year-old boy, and - "Your eyes," she reminded him.

"Dang it," Danny whined, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to turn them back to blue. Fine, he wasn't as good at this part as he pretended. But the eyes were the hardest. He was getting the rest of it down. "Better?" he asked, opening his eyes again.

The woman gave a brief nod. "Why didn't you call me?"

"It was just a little one, Ms. Wells," Danny started to explain, but Ms. Wells cut him off.

"It doesn't matter how _big_ the threat is, or how much _work_ it's going to take. You left your last class to fight it! You're supposed to let me know so you can stay in school." Ms. Wells tucked the blaster in its holster so she could better put her hands on her hips. "And to make matters worse, your parents showed up, despite it 'being a little one'!"

Danny slowly smiled, knowing it looked more like a grimace. "Sorry?"

Ms. Wells sighed, some of the fight leaving her uniformed frame. "We can't keep doing this, kid. You need to tell - "

It was Danny's turn to interrupt. "I am _not_ telling my parents about magic. We've had this conversation. I can manage them just fine."

"Danny. They fight you every chance they get. If they knew about magic, about Crescentia, they'd stop."

"Would they?" Danny looked away from Ms. Wells and crossed his arms. "According to what they know, I'm an evil ghost, and you can't be an evil ghost and a good kid at the same time. Who's to say they would believe me?" He changed his voice, mocking a high-pitched tone. "Oh, look, ghosts are real but not actually what you've been studying! You're looking at a splintered evolutionary group of humans who live inside the moon! And guess what? Your son found out that _he's one of them!_"

Ms. Wells rubbed her forehead. "I know, there's no good way to explain it. There are people who _wouldn't_ believe you. But many people have been introduced to magic later and believed it. Your friend Tucker's parents, for example."

"Believing me isn't really the issue," Danny countered. He looked back up. "If Mom and Dad have evidence, they'd accept magic without a problem. The issue is that they'd have to tell the world! Even Jazz knows that. You've talked to her, she's better at explaining our parents than I am."

"I have talked to Jasmine," Ms. Wells agreed firmly. "I understand your reasoning, even if I don't agree with it. But, Danny, that's not what we were talking about. Your parents are a moot point at the moment. You skipped school to do battle. That's unacceptable, you need to stop. My job is to help you, or part of my job, anyway. I know you're uniquely suited to doing this, and you do a good job, but you don't have to do it all on your own."

Danny shook his head, frustrated. Ms. Wells just didn't get it. It was _his_ fault that the portal to Crescentia actually worked, _his_ fault that the Cressies came in and banged up the place.

"I'm not letting anyone else fight my battles for me," he finally said. "You've got enough on your plate, anyway. This is my responsibility." With that, Danny looked at Ms. Wells again and walked past her to turn the corner and get out of the alleyway he'd fled to.

Ms. Wells called after him as he left. "You're going to have to let me help someday. It will be too much, eventually."

Danny didn't answer, just kept walking, down the road and into his house. His parents were on the phone with Jazz, who was away at college, telling her in excited voices about the ghost they'd nearly caught, and the measures they were taking to protect everybody. Danny silently climbed upstairs and changed his dirty shirt before leaving again. At least tonight was the full moon, and he could find some peace under its light.


	2. 2 The Inciting Incident

"Thanks for covering again for me, guys," Danny said, following Sam and Tucker into the woods. "That guy was nasty. He would've kicked Ms. Wells' butt."

Sam hiked her backpack further up onto her shoulder. "Yeah, but don't expect us to do it often, okay? Mr. Lancer is gonna get suspicious, and besides, you really _should_ stay in class."

"You're not gonna get into NASA if you skip," Tucker added helpfully from the front, leading the way. "But we'll cover for you if it's really bad."

"Thanks," Danny repeated. "You take good care of me. Speaking of which, Sam, are you _sure_ you don't need a blanket? It was cold last month. And the ground was wet." He was still a bit frustrated, but being around his friends had helped his mood, and he was hoping that changing the subject would help.

Sam rolled her eyes, no doubt picking up on the abrupt subject change. "Yes, I'm sure. I've been spending the night under the full moon since I was little. I know how this goes."

"Well, I don't," Danny defended with a smirk, passing through a root that had nearly tripped Tucker. This far away from people, he could just turn that on as a default, which really helped in the forest, as he didn't need to constantly be watching his feet.

"I don't really get it, either, Sam," Tucker called. "It _was_ cold last time. Do you not get cold or something?"

"No, I'm invulnerable to cold," Sam said with a healthy dose of sarcasm. "What, you think that I _don't_ have a warming spell prepared? Come on."

Danny walked through a tree, barely noticing it. "Hey, don't blame me, I've only known about magic for a solid month, okay?"

"Yeah? So what's Tucker's excuse?"

"I only found out you were a witch a month ago, too!" Tucker protested, holding a branch up as he ducked under it. "I don't know what you can do."

"Maybe you should do more research, then," Sam shot back. "I found out you're a werewolf at the same time, and you don't see _me_ asking stupid questions."

"Oh, look at that. We're here."

Tucker's lame attempt at changing the topic again worked, but only because Sam got whacked in the face with a branch that Tucker let spring back without looking. He apologized while Sam glared and rubbed her face, then the three stepped into the clearing.

Danny didn't know who had originally owned the run-down shack, but it did have a certain… aura about it. As soon as they made it past the low stone wall that probably once bordered a garden, he felt safe. It wasn't that he had felt _unsafe_ before, it was just that now… well, now he felt like no one could just stumble across them. Tucker had been coming here for years, nearly every full moon, and he'd said that people really couldn't see them when they were in the cottage's yard. Danny had yet to experience that himself, but the feeling of safety he got here was undeniable.

The three were quiet as they prepared for the night. Sam unloaded her backpack, and before long, had a circle of lit candles of various shapes and sizes surrounding her, as well as shiny, colorful rocks. She sat cross-legged and straight-backed in the middle and closed her eyes. Tucker plopped himself down near her and pulled out his phone. The blue light cast eerie shadows across his face as he waited for the moon. It was only Danny's second full moon, but from last month, he knew that he'd probably be able to stay awake all night and be fine in the morning. So he just sat there, too, and watched the stars begin to appear in the nearly-night sky. The bright moon, a white beacon, began to creep into the sky.

About half an hour passed like that. Danny could sit and watch the stars for hours, and sometimes did, but then he felt what they'd been waiting for.

"And there it is," Tucker said quietly, turning off his phone and putting it inside his backpack. He winced, and Danny couldn't help but mimic the expression. Tucker looked up and noticed Danny watching.

"Don't worry about me, dude," he shrugged, obviously trying to not make a big deal out of it. "It's uncomfortable, not painful. I'll just…" Tucker nodded toward the dilapidated cottage and stood up.

"Likewise, Tucker Foley, do not give heed to fears about Daniel and I," Sam said, the sound of her voice even stranger than the way she was phrasing things. That had happened last month, too. Danny supposed it was just something else he didn't know. She continued, her voice wispy and almost doubled. "We shall repose here among the garden until thy return."

"Uh… okay?" And Tucker disappeared behind the tiny house.

Danny almost didn't notice his return, because the moon had finished rising. The white globe hanging in the sky was captivating, commanding nearly all of Danny's attention, the rest being focused on the stars. Tucker the brown wolf entertained himself by sniffing around the old house. When Danny asked, Tucker had explained that the only difference between full moon nights and normal nights from his perspective was that on full moon nights, his dreams were always from a wolf's perspective. He wasn't conscious in there, though the wolf had enough of Danny's friend left to know that Sam and Danny were to be trusted.

In the moonlight, Sam's candles seemed pathetic. To Danny, anyway. She was unmoving, still as a statue, with the only hints that she wasn't carved from marble being a slight flush across her cheeks and slow breaths inflating her black hoodie with some unfamiliar but quite metal band logo. Sam had even removed all her makeup for the evening, and in contrast to her usual heavy look, her face seemed almost featureless, adding to the statue appearance. Even the flames on the candles seemed to burn perfectly straight, not flickering despite the slight breeze Danny felt in his hair.

These things all passed through Danny's mind in the ten seconds he had his eyes off the moon. Then he returned to his staring. Ever since a month ago, the moon just seemed that much more fascinating. Being an aspiring astronaut, Danny had always loved the moon and the stars, but now… now he knew what was really up there, and he could actually get there someday. He _belonged_ there. It had always been so, spiritually, but knowing about his Crescentian heritage had only increased that connection. Danny and his parents were entirely enchanted by the same thing, though his parents didn't know it.

Of course, if _Danny_ had discovered evidence of unnaturally colored beings that flew, could become invisible, and could pass through solid objects, he might have started to call them ghosts, too. For one wild moment, after he'd stumbled back to Earth after that brief, accidental visit to Crescentia (_the_ visit), he had thought that was what ghosts were, too. Danny was grateful to Tucker and Sam, who had both started to explain about magic and the Moon People, thinking that the other had no idea but unwilling to leave just one of them out of the secret. As it turned out, only Danny had been in the dark about magic, though neither Sam nor Tucker knew that the other knew. That had been a trippy day.

Apparently, the Crescentians' - or, for short, Cressies - powers focused mostly around control of matter. When Danny had bridged the gap between Crescentia and Earth, effectively making the portal work, some latent gene had been activated. He'd read as human before to scanners and magic, but that changed after _the_ visit. Now, Danny read as a ghost to his parents' technology, and as Crescentian to technology and magic that actually knew what was going on. And with all that came the Crescentian gift of matter mastery. Well, _mastery_ was a bit of a strong word. It had only been two months, and Danny was still working on the _mastery_ part. Thankfully, his parents had been away during _the_ visit, so Danny had some leeway then, but he still had had to figure out how to appear normal in a scant three days. That had been a challenge.

It hadn't been helped by the fact that he'd been introduced to the magical community at large during that time, too. There was a really loose governmental structure, there to keep magical criminals down and handle logistics, so, according to Sam and Tucker, Danny needed to let them know he existed.

That was where Ms. Jeanine Wells came in. She worked primarily with situations like his, when someone became magical after having no idea it existed. Ms. Wells had helped Tucker and his family when a rogue werewolf had bitten him at twelve years old, and now Ms. Wells tried her best to keep Danny's life as normal as possible. She had helped Danny explain to Jazz, over the phone, what had happened. He refused to tell his parents, but Ms. Wells insisted that he have somebody in his support group that was family. (The fact that Jazz agreed that it was best to leave their parents in the dark for now helped things.)

Ms. Wells had also assigned herself to help Danny fight the Crescentians that came through the portal looking to wreak some havoc. He rather thought that she should leave the Cressie hunting to him… Ms. Wells wasn't _bad_ at it, but it was hard to fight a being who could fly and choose to not let most weapons hit them. She shouldn't _have_ to fight them, anyway, she was busy enough and it was his fault that they were getting to Earth in the first place.

Danny was grateful for her, though. She'd helped him get acquainted with the magical community and found him some resources to help him better control his powers. ("Resources" meaning mostly obscure history books that weren't very practical but certainly interesting.)

It had been a month, but Danny still didn't have the whole "matter" thing down. As Ms. Wells had pointed out earlier, he consistently forgot that his eyes liked to change color. Luckily, blue eyes turning green could be - and _had been_ \- explained away as a trick of the light. From what Danny knew, and what he had seen, his powers focused more on morphing his own matter, which was in contrast to other Cressies, who seemed better at controlling other matter, such as technology or fire.

It was fortunate for Danny that he had a built-in disguise. His alternate ego, the person who fought Cressies, had green eyes and white hair, versus Danny's usual blue eyes and black hair. So far, he hadn't been able to modify his actual facial features, but evidently, something about greener skin and lighter hair made him unrecognizable if you hadn't seen him change. Even to his parents. That was good for the secret, but Danny secretly wondered what that meant about their relationship. Jazz was having a field day. When she had time for personal projects, anyway. College life was keeping her too busy to do much.

So it wasn't totally unexpected for Danny to look down after getting mightily distracted by the moon and see his body going a bit wispy. Not his clothes - those weren't part of him - but it seemed that his skin was blurring into the air. As far as Danny could tell, he wasn't losing matter, just reconfiguring it a bit. It wasn't as if he really knew what was happening. He could change what he looked like to an extent, go (mostly) invisible, and pass through solid objects. That was about it, though if what the other Cressies could do was any kind of indication, he'd be able to do more when he got the chance to practice. Danny was counting on post-graduation freedom for that.

Danny looked back up at the moon. It was weird to think that just under the silvery surface, there was a gravityless void colored acidic green, filled with not-humans who, nevertheless, copied human society to the point of building the occasional city. Danny hadn't spent much time there, only enough to quickly release the Cressies he'd found from his parents' containment device and book it before closing the portal so they couldn't get back out. They still managed to do that, though… Danny wondered if his parents were opening the portal when he wasn't looking. Probably. It _was_ their full-time job to study "ghosts".

Either way, the moon was still lovely. He still belonged there.

That was what Danny was thinking when the moon decided to wink out.

The light stayed, there was still a moon in the sky, but he couldn't feel it anymore. He blinked in confusion, then horror, and looked at Sam. She was staring back at him with wide eyes. Her candle flames were flickering again, and she had gone pale.

"That was _fun_." Tucker's sarcastic voice sounded from across the overgrown yard, still bathed in moonlight. Danny and Sam turned to focus on him as he stood, then stopped mid-stretch. "Hold on, it's night. Why is it night? Is it still the same day?"

Sam took a moment before doing her best to answer. Her voice was back to normal, though weak. "It's just been a few hours. I'm going to call my grandma."

"I am thoroughly freaked out now," Tucker said, picking his way back over to where his friends sat. Sam pulled her phone out, and her grandma answered right away, judging by the very short time Sam had to wait to begin talking, though Danny couldn't hear the other side of the conversation.

"Me too," Danny agreed. His voice was strung just a tad higher than he would have preferred. His matter had stopped bleeding off of him, and his skin ached a bit where it had abruptly snapped back into place. He didn't like this, not one bit. "I'm going to take a guess and assume that this isn't normal?"

"Not at all." Tucker sat back down next to his backpack, a bit stiffly, as if he was sore. Danny wondered if _that_ was normal.

"Bubbe says to go over to her house," Sam told them, putting her phone away. "Something is wrong. And she might know how to fix it."


	3. 3 Bubbe

**A/N:** Hello! Sorry this is a day late, I couldn't get to the computer yesterday. Please leave me a review! :)

**Previously:** The full moon... stopped. Sam's grandma might know what's going on.

* * *

Sam's grandma's house was not Sam's house. As Danny well knew, Sam's parents disapproved of many things, the most prevalent among them being magic. And, judging from the herbs hanging from the open door frame, the labeled jars of dirt and water on the floor in the entryway, and the old-fashioned shawl that she was wearing, Sam's grandma did not disapprove of magic. She _breathed_ it, almost literally. When they'd arrived, Sam hadn't bothered knocking, and the three had walked in on an old lady freezing water by blowing on it. Danny thought it was an equal mixture of very cool and a little bit creepy.

"Ah, Sam and her friends," the old woman said gaily, putting down her jar and dusting her hands on her long skirt. She came over, her thick shoe heels clacking on the clean tile, and enveloped Sam in a squishy-looking hug.

"Hello, Bubbe," Sam said, her voice muffled by her grandmother's voluminous bosom.

"Welcome, dear," her grandma replied with a smile, releasing Sam, who had to smooth her hair back down but didn't seem upset by it.

"Hi, Mrs., uh, Manson?" Tucker tried, shaking her hand when she put hers out.

"Mrs. Elias, actually, Manson is my son-in-law. But please, call me Bubbe." Sam's grandma didn't settle for just a handshake - she hugged Tucker, too, though that was shorter and less… well, huge, than the hug she'd given Sam.

Danny grinned when she approached him. He couldn't help it. There was such calm here. He could see why Sam spent most of her time here rather than her own house, and he kind of wondered why she hadn't moved out yet. Bubbe gave him the same hug that she had bestowed upon Tucker, though Danny accepted it with perhaps a bit more decorum than his friend had.

"And you're Danny," Bubbe said, pulling away to look at him. "I do believe this is the first time we've officially met, magic and all."

"Yeah, I think so."

Bubbe regarded him for a moment longer, a quirky smile on her lips. "Curious," she said, staring, then she blinked and turned back to Sam. Danny and Tucker exchanged a look, but Tucker just shrugged. He didn't know.

"You're here about the Soul, of course," Bubbe said to Sam, gesturing the three over to her kitchen table. The chairs were mismatched, but instead of seeming tacky, it felt homey.

Sam rolled her eyes. "I told you that on the phone, Bubbe." They took places around the table.

"I can't resist trying to sound mysterious, _aynikl_." Danny blinked at the unfamiliar word, and determined to ask Sam about it later. Bubbe fixed her deep violet eyes - a lot like Sam's, actually - on them and cocked her head. She rested her hands on the table, her many chunky rings glinting in the few candle flames and dim lamp. "You have had quite the night."

Nobody knew what to say to that, but thankfully, Bubbe continued. "A full moon means rest, to most. To some, like Tucker, it means… it _usually _means… change, a deviation from the regular." Tucker's face barely twitched, but his lips tightened. Danny glanced back to Bubbe to see her smiling at Sam. "To others of us, the full moon is regenerative, healing, practically indescribable in its calm. And to very few - " Here she meant Danny. " - the nights of the full moon are the closest they get to home." Danny understood Tucker's reaction now. He had almost the same one.

"A change to the moon is a frightening prospect. Luckily, the problem is not with the moon this day. Now - what do you know about the Soul?" Bubbe asked, her tone changing. Danny was immediately intrigued - he'd heard the term in passing before, but it hadn't actually been explained to him.

"The Soul?" Tucker asked, tilting his head. "Is it that serious?"

"It is, unfortunately." Bubbe frowned sadly. "The Soul's power seems to be waning. I'm not sure why. It could just be earthly grime, perhaps a buildup of magic, or even something as simple as age."

"Bubbe, that's not simple!" Sam wrinkled her eyebrows, looking worried.

Danny held up a hand. "Um, pause for a second here. I've _heard_ of the Soul, but - "

"Ah, I see," Bubbe nodded. "It is a story, Danny, beginning with the first people in this forest." She smiled. "I will tell you the tale, though briefly. Remind me to tell you both again later."

"She has a performance," Sam put in. Tucker raised an eyebrow, obviously familiar with the Soul but not with Bubbe's way of telling it.

Bubbe began, her voice dropping mysteriously. "It begins with the natives who dwelt here first, before European colonization. They noticed that magic has more of a presence here, and the greatest shamans and other magic-workers often visited. It was once a rite of passage, a pilgrimage of sorts.

"When we, the settlers, arrived, things in these woods were not the same as in the woods everywhere else. Here, the natives and the settlers were able to integrate more peacefully than in other parts of the continent, separated from the affairs of the world around them. Magic flows through Amity Park, Danny, almost _too much_ magic. There are other magical places, of course - Salem, Stonehenge, the pyramids in Egypt - but Amity Park is special. Magical people arrived in droves once the town was established, and the magic here only grew further.

"It… became a problem in the late 1800s. There was so much errant magic that the fabric of reality was tearing apart." Here Bubbe paused, and looked at Danny oddly. "It was then that we found out about Crescentia for the first time, in fact. There were many natural portals opening at the time." Danny felt his face warm a little. Luckily, Bubbe then returned to her storytelling gaze, the one that moved rather than stayed focused on him.

"The situation was nearing apocalyptic. Reality was dissolving, and even the many non-magical members of the community noticed. How could they not? If magic continued to run rampant, the world would quite literally collapse.

"The coven of witches active at the time devised a solution, but it mostly failed. I won't get into specifics, only that one of their members, a woman named Lowanda, sacrificed herself to give their totem life. It is she that now filters the magic through this area, organizing it and moderating it."

"Like a surge protector," Tucker said, his eyes on Bubbe. Danny wasn't sure whether he was helping to explain or asking, but either way, Bubbe nodded.

"But now…" Sam's fingers twisted the sleeve of her hoodie.

"Something is wrong with the Soul," Bubbe finished. "I cannot yet tell what, but if it is left alone, incidents like tonight will seem minor. Magic will not behave as it is supposed to. Magical barriers and safeguards will fail. The people who rely on magic, as all of us here do, will be crippled in ways I can't even begin to describe for the horror. And as it did in Lowanda's time, reality will rend."

Danny picked up the implication. He felt cold. "And Crescentia…"

Bubbe nodded once, tightening her shawl around her shoulders. "It will merge with Amity Park, and eventually the rest of Earth as well."

Oh, man. Danny rubbed his hairline in worry. He had enough to do with a small portal that was closed at least part of the time. Crescentians didn't know how to get along with humans, that much was certain. If the two places were syncretized… Danny didn't want to imagine it.

"Bubbe, what do we _do_?" Sam's voice was desperate. "Nobody knows where the Soul is! We don't even know _what_ it is! How is anyone supposed to help?"

"We no longer have the strong covens of yesteryear, _aynikl_, but we still have some of their traditions," Bubbe answered cryptically. "A riddle has been passed down from witch to witch since that time, magically stored in memories so it cannot degrade, and is supposed to lead one to the Soul. I was meaning to tell Sam soon, anyway."

Tucker reached down, almost startling Danny next to him, but he was just retrieving his phone from his backpack. He opened a notes app and looked up expectantly at Bubbe, who frowned.

"There is no need for that, Tucker. You will remember, and it is best that the riddle is not stored anywhere but the minds of those who need it."

"Aw," Tucker whined, lowering the device.

"Put it away, Tucker," Sam repeated, leveling a glare that was no less frightening without her eyeliner.

Tucker grumbled, but he dropped the device back into his backpack beside him. Danny thought that maybe he'd try to record the sound, but he didn't seem to be. They turned their attention back to Bubbe, who looked a little bit scarier now than she had earlier. Danny didn't know if it was the lighting or just the anticipation, but something around the old woman swirled as she spoke, obviously from well-rehearsed memory.

"_Where bark and bite and flame combine,_

_There Moon and Soul and self align._

_A declaration must thou speak - _

_Deliverance! and thou art weak._

_And only by thus may you find_

_A way to tread the path that's blind._"

In the silence that followed the declamation, they all sat very still. Danny found that he had no problem recalling the words (which was a little weird, he'd always had to study hard for tests). They seemed to have been burned in his brain, and they ran through his head over and over. Bark and bite and flame? A dog on fire? The path that's blind? A dark tunnel? The riddle didn't seem to shed much light on the problem.

Sam was the first to break the reverie. "Can the Soul be harmed? If it is magically stuck, how will we know?"

"Lore says that the Soul's physical condition will reflect its magical condition," Bubbe answered. "If its magic is caught somewhere, the Soul will not be in its best state. And you cannot harm it purposely without powerful magic. There is nobody around here with enough power to severely harm the Soul this way, or I would know about it."

"It's dirty, then? That's what's wrong?" Danny asked, feeling hopeful.

"It seems so. That is the only possibility, frankly. The only… the only positive possibility." Bubbe smiled sadly, and that was the end of the conversation.

* * *

**Up** **Next: **The trio solicits help deciphering the riddle from a certain young woman in college.


	4. 4 The Library

**Previously**: Sam's grandma broke the news - to save Amity, they're going to have to solve a riddle.

—————

"A riddle, huh? To find the Soul?" said an excited voice over the laptop's little speaker. "I've got a spare hour, lay it on me." Tucker had set up a video call, and the three were huddled on the floor in Danny's room around Tucker's computer, making sure they all got into the picture.

"You ready?" Danny asked, at the same time that Sam said, "My grandma told us not to write it down."

It seemed that the second thing was all that Danny's sister heard. She laid down her pen. "Oh, okay. I'm just worried about remembering it enough to help."

"Don't be," Tucker said with a shudder. "I haven't gotten it out of my head since I heard it."

Danny grinned at that, then repeated his question. "Are you ready?"

Jazz nodded. "Shoot."

"All right, here goes." Danny took a breath and recited the poem. Probably the first one he'd memorized for longer than a class period. His voice was missing the deep resonance of Bubbe's, but the words still had a power. "Where bark and bite and flame combine, There Moon and Soul and self combine. A declaration must thou speak - Deliverance! and thou art weak. And only by thus may you find A way to tread the path that's blind."

Jazz was quiet for a moment. "Wow, I see what you mean. I'm not likely to forget that anytime soon. Okay, let's get to unraveling this. The thing about riddles is that they never say what they mean; you need to think very abstractly. I'm not as familiar with magic as you three are, yet, so you're going to have to think hard, too."

"All ready for that," Sam agreed with a nod. She reached over Danny and grabbed a handful of chips that she proceeded to eat one at a time. Since last night, she'd gotten sleep and replaced her makeup, so she looked more like her normal self again.

"Okay, first bit - where bark and bite and flame combine. Is there some kind of dog that breathes fire?"

"A hellhound," Tucker shrugged, crushing a fistful of chips into his mouth. "Bu' hau do dat mah shenshe?"

"What?"

"But how does that make sense?" Danny translated. "Yeah, how does that make sense? An animal would move around."

"Hm," Jazz hummed. "Is there a place to store artwork? Maybe there's a carving of a hellhound somewhere, and you have to… I don't know, touch the moon and the sun on it to open up a secret passageway."

Sam crunched another chip from her hand. "Nothing that I know of. Bark and bite and flame…"

"We're barking up the wrong tree," Tucker snorted, having since swallowed. Danny took a chip from the bowl, his hand under his chin making chewing really annoying, though the sweet saltiness was worth it.

"Wait!" Jazz snapped her fingers. "Tree! Maybe it's not a hellhound at all. Is there some kind of tree on fire?"

"No, but there are trees that can shoot fire at you," Sam realized. She reached backward to pull out a notepad and a pencil. "Why didn't we think of this first?"

Danny shrugged. "Because trees don't normally shoot fire, I think," he responded dryly.

"So you need to find a list of trees that have fire, or maybe are near fire and have teeth," Jazz summarized. "The next part… there Moon and Soul and self combine. Do you have to wait for the next full moon?"

"Oh man, I hope not," Sam responded. "I hope it just means that we have to be there with the moon in the sky. That makes any night that's not the new moon viable. I say we assume it doesn't mean that, but we might have to go back for the full moon."

"A declaration thou must speak - Deliverance! And thou art weak," Jazz continued.

"We just have to tell the Soul we're there to save it," Tucker reasoned, grabbing another handful of chips. "And maybe be prepared for it taking our magic temporarily to test our mettle or something."

Danny gave his friend a weird look. "That sounds like a fantasy book, Tucker."

"Hey, aren't we kind of living in one? I think the cliche rules still apply here."

"I don't think he's entirely wrong," Jazz put in, tapping her pen on her desk. "A declaration thou must speak - Deliverance!? Sounds like you have to say something about wanting to save the Soul, then something about being weak."

"It can't be that simple," Sam said, shaking her head. "The Soul must be able to tell what we really want it for, or something, and if our intentions aren't pure, we'll be weakened somehow. Maybe the tree will start to shoot fire at us or something."

"Either way, we need to want to save the Soul," Danny said. "I think we have that part worked out. So what about the next bit - And only by thus may you find A way to tread the path that's blind. Is that just finishing up the riddle? Saying that once we "speak the declaration", we'll be able to find the Soul?"

"Maybe there's some kind of tunnel under the tree?" Tucker suggested.

Sam scowled in thought. "Or that "weakening" is the magic making us blind but having a way to get through it."

"I think you did it, guys," Jazz said. "Find a fire-breathing tree, tell it you want to save the Soul, then you'll be led there if you're being honest." She picked up her computer and walked to a different room, then picked up her phone, which was connected to a charging cable. "Oh, crap, I've got to go. I totally forgot about tutoring today! Sorry, guys."

"It's all good," Danny told her with a smile. "Don't worry, you helped a lot."

"Yeah, thanks, Jazz!" Sam echoed.

Jazz grinned back at them, then her face became serious. "Good luck! And hey, be safe. Call me if there's any trouble, I'm only a few hours away. Or, better yet, call Ms. Wells. Promise?"

"Promise," Danny responded. "Talk to you later, sis."

"Bye!"

Tucker reached forward and terminated the call. He shut the laptop, then looked sideways at Sam and Danny. "Now what?"

"Now we go to the magical library and research fire-breathing trees," Sam said, standing. She looked down at the pad of paper in her hands.

Danny followed her to his feet. "Aw, come on, there's no electronic search feature?"

"Not yet," Tucker answered. He put his laptop in his backpack and swung it over his shoulder. "That's one of my projects for after I graduate college - digitizing the magical world. They're surprisingly bad at it."

It didn't take long to get to an entrance to the magical part of the city. Sam knew where all of them were, and she led them to an art store just down the street from FentonWorks. After making sure that there was nobody around, she grabbed a shelf full of yarn and pulled, revealing a very small doorway that she slipped into. Tucker followed her, and Danny made sure to close the door after them. They descended on a set of old wooden stairs, Danny's hand up and glowing bright green to provide light. After only a few minutes of scant conversation, they emerged into a wider street lit with magic flames that stuck out of the wall like torches. Danny extinguished his light.

The closer they got to the center of town, the more people they saw. Shops and other businesses were built into the basements of buildings Danny knew were above, even some houses. Since you didn't need to worry about weather underground, and with magic sealing the dirt into place, people were able to set out well-loved furniture in front of cafes, and even what looked like several whole living rooms by the large bookstore. Sam, Tucker, and Danny passed a good number of people on their way to the library, most of them paying no attention to the group.

Finally, they made it to the quiet library. It just looked like any old library, despite the occasional sign saying that a shelf was full of cursed books. The librarian had three eyes too many, and raised an eyebrow as the three walked in. He didn't say anything, though, simply returning to his paperwork. Well, perhaps this library wasn't exactly the same as the ones up in the mundane world, since they still had a paper check-out system. As far as Danny could tell, there wasn't a single computer in the entire place. Tucker was probably having an aneurysm, from the sounds of his exaggerated choking.

Sam knew exactly where she was going. Danny, following her, easily found the almanacs and maps. Sam pulled out a few heavy books, glanced at their titles, and either put them back or handed it behind her, where either Danny or Tucker would take it and add it to a pile. Once they couldn't carry any more, she led them to a table in the back.

"All right, Danny, you look through that one for magical trees," she said, pointing to a large green book that flipped open at her words. "Tucker, cross-reference his findings with reported fire sites, which should be recorded there for those who have fire weaknesses." A smaller but thicker book flew out of the stack and landed in front of Tucker, who was grumbling as he was sitting down.

"This would be easier if it was in a searchable database."

"Probably would be, but unfortunately for you, it's not," Sam replied, taking the remaining books and setting them in a stack in front of her. She waved a hand, and the book on top began to flip through its pages, one by one.

Tucker rolled his eyes, but pulled a notebook from the depths of his backpack. He ripped out a piece and handed it to Danny, the ripped edge trailing on the books. Danny snagged a golf pencil from the cup at the edge of the table and proceeded to take notes. It was fairly tedious work, as he had to go from the index entry "trees" to every page it referenced, looking for ones that were magical, or even better, those that were around or produced flame. There were more than he thought there would be, though this book did cover the entire county and not just the city. Danny really hoped that they were right about the tree thing. He'd hate all this work to be a waste.

After hours, Danny couldn't take it anymore. Sam had worked through her stack, taking notes on locations and references to the Soul. Danny had filled up six pages of Tucker's notebook paper, front and back, with the locations of magical trees. Tucker had long finished, and was carefully crossing out his and Danny's entries when they didn't correspond. The only problem was, they too often did. It was maddening.

Luckily, it seemed that Danny's timing was perfect. Sam plopped in a chair and tilted her head back. "I never want to read another book written in old English."

"Try Latin," Tucker argued, slamming his last book shut and clicking his pen closed.

Sam grinned, her eyes still shut and her head resting on the back of her chair. "There's a reason I gave you that specific job."

"So what do we do now?" Danny asked. He stood and started stacking books.

Sam took a deep breath, stretched, and stood, too. "I'll take the list to Bubbe, and she'll probably have some way of narrowing it down. And then… well, I guess we start visiting trees."

With a groan, Tucker dropped his head aggressively on the table. "How long is this gonna take?"

"A few days, most likely."

"Oh, come on."

"Don't be such a baby - oh, Danny, we don't have to take the books back. The imps will get it. Probably."

Danny looked up from where he'd been trying to fit one more book on the stack in his arms. Imps?

"Oh. Okay." He put the stack back on the table and wiped some dust from his shirt.

"Like I was saying," Sam turned back to Tucker, who'd finally stood and put his notebooks and technology back into his backpack. "Yeah, this will probably take a few days. But we'd better get right on it - there's no telling what could happen to the Soul if we wait to help it."

"Guess we should get going, then," Danny said. "My parents have some non-ghost-hunting supplies I can steal. We can make it a camping trip."

—————

**Next: **The quest begins, and Danny runs into a not-so-friendly ex-girlfriend face.

**A/N: **Hello! Thank you to everybody who has followed and favorited and left reviews! It makes me so happy to see that people are enjoying this little thingy that I wrote! This chapter was a lot of setup, and relatively short. Next week's is more action-oriented and longer, no worries. Make sure to tell me what you think! :) Until next week!


	5. 5 A Familiar Face

**Previously: **The trio searched out some possible solutions to the riddle and went to the library.

———

They found the first tree near the river that the freeway followed. It wasn't actually that deep in the forest, but it had still taken a few hours to walk to. Danny was grateful that Sam had taken over map duty, because all the trees had gotten him turned around. They were all just green and brown and green and brown and look there's some white and green and brown and… Nature wasn't exactly Danny's first love.

The sun was low in the sky. After getting the information they needed from the library, the three had retreated to their homes to gather supplies, mainly camping things. And, in Danny's case, more weapons.

They'd gotten a late start, unfortunately, due to some problems with Sam's parents objecting to her going on a camping trip, and with a Crescentian escaping the portal a few minutes before they were supposed to leave. Between all that, Sam was cross, Danny was tired, and Tucker was quite loudly complaining about the lack of WiFi in the forest.

Sam was in the lead, and shouldered her way through a tall bush to reach the clearing immediately around the first tree. It was very knotty, its bark dark and twisted. The leafless branches reached out a ways, and then sharply turned upward. It was unusual, but didn't look too unnatural. The unnatural part was in how the tree grew alone, not even any grass coming within a few feet of it.

She put her backpack on the ground and slowly approached the tree, one hand out. Danny and Tucker stayed behind, not wanting to get fireballs shot at them, or whatever this fire magic tree was supposed to do. Hopefully subtly, Danny took stock of the clearing, and planned an escape route in case Sam put herself in more danger than necessary and he needed to help get her out.

He shouldn't have worried. The tree did, it seem, spit fireballs from holes in its trunk, but Sam was prepared. The fire never got within a few inches of her, probably because of some spell. They veered off and disappeared before hitting any other part of the forest. When she was close enough, Sam put herself between two knots so the tree couldn't aim at her, and laid a hand on the bark. Next to him, Danny felt Tucker tense in nervousness, as if just waiting for something bad to happen.

Sam sighed and turned around. "It's not this one," she said loudly. "There's not enough magic in it to be guarding anything." She left the tree be and began to make her way back.

The tree spit a yellow ball into the air, as if in protest. A chittering sound drew their attention to the tree's empty branches, despite the summer heat. There was a little gray squirrel cavorting in the treetop, its little fingers latched onto a twig. A little ball of fire came near it, almost playfully, and the squirrel just seemed to yell at it and scamper away.

Sam picked her backpack up from the ground and snorted. "Look at Tucker."

Danny glanced over, and he had to repress a laugh, too, when he saw the very intense way Tucker was staring at the squirrel. He grabbed his friend's elbow and pulled him away.

"Come on, dog boy, we have more trees to find."

Tucker blinked, then stuck his tongue out at Danny even as he took his place in the little circle they formed. Sam held out her map and crossed off a circle with a red pen. There were many more circles marked, connected in a rough path by a line. She pointed to another circle, on the other side of the river.

"That's where we're headed next," she said. "Over the river at that bridge, then through - "

" - the woods?" finished Tucker.

"To grandmother's house we go," added Danny.

Sam shook her head with a not-really-annoyed eye roll. "Fine. I'll give you that one. But this next tree was just reported as mildly dangerous, not quite as bad as this one." She jerked a thumb over her shoulder.

"Sounds like fun." Danny wished that making his backpack intangible would lessen its weight on his shoulders. Unfortunately, it didn't really work like that. He wasn't exactly looking forward to this multiple-day camping trip where he had to carry everything. Who had invented this?

It took another two hours to get to the next tree. This one had its leaves and blended in with the others around it. Unlike the last one, this tree's powers seemed to only manifest when you were under it, as the air under the tree was much hotter and even more humid than the air around it. Because of that, the things that grew under it were distinctly more tropical. The entire space seemed to have its own ecosystem.

"The Encyclopedia of Amity Park Botanical Life said that this tree was smuggled in seed form from the Amazon," Sam said, stepping over a fern and touching the tree.

"I can't say that I'm a fan," replied Tucker, taking his hat off and using it to wipe his suspiciously shiny face.

Sam took her hand off the trunk. "This isn't it, either."

Danny glanced up at the darkening sky from beyond the borders of the heat. He really preferred cooler temperatures. "Maybe we should camp here," he suggested. "I'm not sure if we could get to another tree before it gets dark, and having a source of heat like this might be good for nighttime."

Sam sighed. "Yeah, that's not a bad idea. I hope we can get more knocked off the list tomorrow than just two."

"How many are there total?" Tucker asked, ducking under the leaves to the cool air again. He took his backpack off, and Danny did not look at the sweat spots on his shirt. He knew he had them, too.

"A few dozen," Sam groaned, following Tucker's lead and leaving the tree's mini-climate. She laid down on the grass and closed her eyes, looking ready to sleep right then.

It took a little while, as none of them had ever camped in a traditional way before (Danny's family always had their Ghost Assault Vehicle, Tucker's parents were more for fancy tents and trailers, and Sam's just went to resorts), but eventually, they managed to erect a simple kind of tent: one tarp for the ground, another draped across a string they'd tied between the warm tree and another. With the addition of some rocks, the shelter wasn't half-bad.

As the warmth of the sun faded, even Danny was grateful for the Amazonian tree. They ate a small dinner of boiled vegetables and, for Danny and Tucker at least, beef jerky, around a tiny fire out of the protection of the tree. Their conversation neatly avoided anything to do with their quest, except when the fire died and the embers were barely glowing.

Tucker was tying knots in a long piece of grass. If not for his reflective glasses and light yellow T-shirt, he'd be all but invisible in the darkness. "Do you really think that this will work?" he asked quietly.

"What do you mean?" Danny said, looking away from the embers that he'd been turning over with a stick.

"Just that… if the Soul is really all that powerful and necessary, do you really think it's just dirty? I mean, come on."

"I don't think that dirt or grime is the main problem," Sam answered after a moment. She was staring skywards, past the trees, towards the waning moon. "But we don't know the real problem, and we won't unless we find the Soul. I rather think that the solution will become obvious when we see it. I've got a feeling."

"I hope so," Tucker muttered. Danny poked the glowing coals again, not really wanting to think about it. He didn't have Sam's confidence that everything would turn out just fine. Perhaps the witch that had made the Soul at the beginning would have put in some kind of safeguard, and that's what Sam meant. Or maybe Sam had some different kind of connection with the Soul, being a witch, too, and all. Danny scowled slightly and shied away from the big, prickly ball in his stomach that had emerged at the thought and went back to prodding the fire.

When the fire had completely died, they dumped water on it and packed away the food tools. The sounds of night in the forest were loud, but somehow soothing. None of the three talked much, lost in their own thoughts and too tired to chat. They laid down side-by-side in their little tent, subdued. The heat of the tree had turned from oppressive to comfortable, and even with three bodies under an insulating roof, it was actually really pleasant.

It was probably only an hour later that Danny opened his eyes. He shivered, and for a moment, that confused him. Then he heard very distant sounds of fighting, and his confusion became weary frustration. Really? He hated it when Crescentians woke him up. Doubly so when he had to do things the next day.

Danny didn't want to wake up his friends, so he slipped quietly through the ground and emerged a few feet away. Looking back, he didn't see them stir, so he figured he was safe. After grabbing a blaster from his bag, he let the human form slip away and he was flying headlong through the trees. Literally through them. He didn't have the energy for another fight. Well, technically he did, but Danny really didn't feel like doing this. Mentally, he was too tired.

That feeling only intensified when Danny saw who it was, exactly, who was fighting. One of them was a glowing green girl, dressed in a red jacket and harassing the other from the air. Kitty was flinging taunts at Valerie, who was earth-bound and not looking happy about it.

Kitty turned her head around to look at Danny as he crept through the forest towards them. A wide grin stretched her blue lips. "Aw, look at that, your boyfriend is here to save you!"

Quickly taking advantage of the distraction, Valerie punched the air, and a ball of dirt came hurtling towards the back of Kitty's head. Danny winced as it hit, knocking her twenty feet. Then Valerie turned her fiery eyes on him, and he held his hands up in surrender. Valerie didn't want to hear it. Her face twisted, and Danny found himself dodging a ball of dirt, too. Was it just his imagination, or had it been less aggressive than the one she'd thrown at Kitty? Danny knew better than to ask, though.

"He is not my boyfriend," Valerie growled. A pillar of earth rose to catch at Kitty's ankle, but the girl just floated higher and flipped upside down.

"Now, now, Valerie, you should have greater respect for past love interests! You never know when you're going to be forced to talk to them again."

Valerie threw rocks at Kitty in rage, but they were poorly-aimed. Kitty laughed and dove, scoring a few hits herself.

Yikes. It seemed that Valerie didn't have her "ghost" equipment on her. Danny had helped her obtain some, at first, when they'd dated and before he'd become Crescentian. He'd thought, then, that her ghost-hunting tendencies were bunk, but also thought it was kinda cute and helped her out. That usually translated to swiping things from the lab. (Once he found out that she was magic-aware and was purposely hunting the very thing he'd become, he told her and… well, she hadn't taken it very well. And that had been the end of that.)

Regardless of what their past was, though, this was what Danny did. He fought the Crescentians who hated Earth. Feelings couldn't get in the way of helping Valerie… either his or hers. Now, hopefully, she'd get with that program.

Danny aimed his blaster, and waited patiently for an opening. Valerie took most of Kitty's attention, so the Cressie eventually forgot that Danny was there. Hopefully. Valerie raised herself on a wave of earth, chasing the green figure through the air.

With a deep breath, Danny squeezed the trigger, timing the shot with one of Valerie's attacks. The blast shattered the dirt ball and got Kitty in her face. She flipped backward with a shout. Both girls turned to glare at Danny, who just rose into the air in response.

Valerie fumed, but accepted the temporary alliance and began to bring up tendrils of wet soil that wrapped themselves around Kitty before she had the chance to fly away. Danny hit her again, in the chest, and Kitty's color visibly drained from her form. After one more hit, just to make sure, Danny holstered the blaster and used the thermos. He'd need to take a moment to empty that, soon. It was getting full and probably very uncomfortable for those stuck inside.

In the stillness after the battle, Valerie lowered herself back to the normal ground level. Her eyes bored into Danny, and he looked away from the glare. There was silence. It stretched, too long for Danny's liking. He broke it, saying what was on his mind with a shrug.

"We still made a good team."

"You and your kind don't care about us," Valerie snapped, her anger bubbling out like a volcano. "Stop pretending that you do."

Danny knew exactly what this was about and looked back at her. "Val, if I'd known that was your house - "

"You'd what? Not have slammed a car into the roof? You knew somebody lived there. The long and short of it is that you don't care."

"I… look, there was no other way I could've nailed that guy," Danny defended, crossing his arms.

Valerie threw up her hands. "You just keep changing the argument! You didn't know it was my house, you couldn't do anything else, you didn't see the roof there, you didn't mean to pick up a frickin' car. I've heard it before, Danny. You don't deserve a second chance."

When Danny was quiet, Valerie scoffed and turned around to stomp away.

"Val, please - "

Without turning back, Valerie thrust a fist upward. The grass and dirt around Danny's feet shifted and tumbled upwards, encasing his legs up to his knee.

"Nuh-uh. _Valerie_. Do me a favor for once, Cressie," Valerie said. "Pretend that you can't just phase out of that, and let me walk away." She let her hand drop, waited two seconds, then continued to go into the forest alone.

Danny didn't follow. He watched her until there were too many trees in the way, then left the mound of earth and trudged back to the Amazonian tree.

She didn't have to like him. She was safe and alive. That was what mattered.

———

**Next:** The right tree is found. Things don't go according to plan.

———

Hello! This is me! I really liked writing this chapter. I don't think I'm very good at writing combat, but I still have fun with it. I'm not really a shipper... though if you squint, you can see some Gray Ghost and some Everlasting Trio in there. Thanks for your comments and favorites and follows! I see them all and it really makes me want to keep going. :) I have some exciting things planned and I hope you'll see them as exciting too!!

@ Shadow Kat-Lyn - I don't tend to like dramatic AUs either but apparently I'm writing one? Glad you're liking it anyway!


	6. 6 Another Fireball Tree

**Previously:** Danny had a bit of a run-in with Valerie, who doesn't like him all that much right now.

* * *

Morning came as surely as it always did. It was pleasantly cool, and after packing up, the three left the Amazonian tree and began to follow the nearby river. Sam was full of energy, nearly bouncing as she waited for the boys to catch up. It was nearly impossible for Danny to not be excited, too. Even the usual meat argument between Sam and Tucker - the standby conversation topic - was more joking than usual.

Danny didn't bother telling his friends about Valerie and Kitty from the night before. That horse had been beaten to death multiple times, and Danny was in too good of a mood to talk about it.

The next tree they found, which was indeed over the river and through the woods, prompting Tucker to start calling it the Grandma Tree, somehow had lava dripping from its branches. Danny picked Sam up, adding his intangibility to her fire-resistance spells, and took her close to the trunk for just a moment. After giving Danny a frosty look because she definitely could have done that on her own, Sam confirmed that the lava tree wasn't what they were looking for.

"But what _are_ we looking for?" Tucker asked, glaring at the tree as if this was its fault. "If a lava tree can't protect the Soul, what can?"

"There's a lot of different protections something that powerful could have," Sam answered, picking up her backpack and sliding it on. "A dimensional pocket, monsters summoned to fight whoever's there, magical darkness, the list goes on. Okay… the next tree seems promising. Over here, just a little ways past the edge of town."

Danny frowned at the map, all the empty circles tiring him out and seeming to make his backpack even heavier. They'd crossed off three trees and there were so many more to go. This trip might take longer than they planned.

They'd started that day early, and Sam was pretty good at planning their route, so they got to more than two trees that day. Danny saw a lot more magic, which was interesting. There was a tree that was actually two twisted around each other, one giving off an aura of cold and one radiating heat. A few magical deer crossed their path, obviously magical because they were rainbow-colored.

At one point, a little bat flew up to Sam and had a conversation with her in the daylight. All Danny heard was screeching on the bat's end. Tucker gave the bat a weird look, too, and when it was gone, Sam just shrugged and said that they were friends.

Figured.

As the sun crossed the sky, Danny's energy sank. After the lava tree, they'd seen six more, and the day was wearing to a close already.

Sam sighed, dodging another burst of sparks from the latest stop. "One more, guys, it's not far. Just over that hill."

"And then can we be done for the day?" groaned Tucker. "My feet are going to fall off, and then you'd have to carry me everywhere."

"Aw, come on, you baby, we only walked fifteen miles today. That's, like, nothing," Sam replied, though Danny had caught her wincing as she stood earlier.

"Less than one left," Danny tried to say, though he was wearing out, too. He considered flying the rest of the way, but he kind of thought that was unfair to his friends, who he couldn't carry that long. Besides, just one more mile wouldn't kill him.

"One more might kill me completely!"

Danny smirked.

As the forest got darker, Sam cast some spell and a little yellow light sparked into existence, leading the way and illuminating the plants. Together, they trudged over the hill, going slower and slower. It was fully night by the time they got to the last tree.

"This is, like, right next to my house, dude," Tucker said when they entered the small clearing. "Okay, not _right_ next to it, but I've definitely seen this tree before."

"I haven't." Sam didn't bother taking her backpack off and walked towards the tree. She had a curious expression on her face.

"This one is really old," Danny noticed, his eyes giving him a better look at the twisted old trunk and vast canopy of leaves. "What does it do?"

Tucker dropped his backpack and stretched. "I don't know. Maybe we should just call it a night, maybe run back to my house for a shower or something."

Ignoring him, Sam said, "Something's different about this one." She was within reach of the tree now, and Danny watched as she reached hesitantly out towards it.

She screamed.

Danny ran towards her, worrying that her magic was doing something, but she turned away from the tree with just a dazed expression. Her sleeves smoked at the edges.

"It shot fire at me," Sam said, almost sounding offended. She looked fine. Danny reached her, and wrapped his arms around her shoulders.

The tree made a grunting sort of noise, like boulders being crashed into each other. Tucker yelled a warning, and Danny, with Sam, dove into the earth just in time to avoid a barrage of fireballs. They surfaced again a distance away, near where Tucker had fallen to dodge.

"This one is a bit more aggressive than the others," Danny managed to say as Sam extracted herself.

"Stop doing that!" she said. "I'm totally capable of walking fifty feet on my own."

Danny winced. "I know, I just get worried, and I'm still not used to the fact that _fire_ can _hit you_ and all it does is warm you up."

"Now is not the time for chatting!" shouted Tucker as they had to duck behind another tree to avoid more fire.

"Is this the right tree?" Danny asked.

After a brief pause, Sam nodded. "Yeah. I'm not sure how I know, but this is the right one. Something about it is different."

"So what do we do?"

"We need some kind of… I don't know, 'declaration of deliverance'," she responded, peeking her head out from cover. "Hey! Tree! We're here to help the Soul!"

The tree responded with more fire, whizzing through the leaves and narrowly avoiding Sam's head. Strangely, the tree's fire didn't seem to catch the other plants in the forest, even the dead sticks on the ground.

Tucker leaned out to look at the tree. "What are we supposed to say? 'Spare us, oh Mighty Tree!'? Is that even real fire?"

He was hit full-on by a fireball.

"Yeah, that's real fire, all right," he said. "Ow. Sam, would you mind?"

Sam winced and twirled her finger in the air. The redness in Tucker's face receded, and he visibly relaxed.

It was Danny's turn to try. "We're… going to deliver the Soul!" he called out to the tree. "We need to fix whatever's wrong! Please let us in."

That didn't work, either.

"Moon and Soul and self combine… do we really need to wait for the full moon?" Sam sounded anxious, and Danny understood why.

Something was weird. It was like he was getting vertigo, only he wasn't actually having trouble keeping his balance. Tucker fell over, then scrambled to his feet.

"What _was_ that?" Danny asked, lifting a few inches into the air just in case the ground was moving or something.

Sam looked out at the tree. "That was magic. A weird burst or something. This might be the Soul wearing down."

"Come _on,_ tree!" Tucker said, facing their enemy. "We can't do this without your cooperation" There was no immediate response, so Tucker took a brave step forward. Sam moved out from behind her cover, and Danny did the same, hoping that the tree couldn't spit fire in more directions than one at a time. Or something. Maybe Tucker was on to something.

Taking a visible breath, Tucker tried again. "We can't wait for the full moon," he said. "The Soul needs help and we just want to make things better."

Time seeemed to slow down. A fireball emerged from the tree, exactly where, Danny couldn't tell. It was moving faster than the others had, straight towards Tucker. Danny reached out, coming fully into the clearing, but he could tell that he wouldn't reach his friend in time. Tucker began to throw himself to the side, but anyone could see that he'd reacted a hair too late. Sam pushed her hands out toward him, a green glow touching her eyes.

There was a booming sound from somewhere, like thunder but worse. Time sped up again, almost too fast for Danny to process it.

Whatever magic that Sam had been planning to unleash was ripped from her, the force throwing her to the soft ground. The wild grass around them all shot up, growing much, much too fast. It quickly obscured Tucker, on the ground and staring wide-eyed at his hands. His face was… being weird, looking almost as if he was going to turn into a wolf but then changing back to normal. The blades of grass grew thicker and longer and whipped around as if by a strong wind.

Danny was distracted by his own magic going crazy. He could tell that he was flickering in and out of visibility, and that he'd switched from human without realizing it. His gloves seemed to almost be melting into the air. Distantly, he heard the freeway devolve into chaos, with more than one crash.

"_What's happening?!_" Tucker yelled over the noise. Was there actually noise? Or was that just Danny's heart pumping blood into his ears?

The moment passed. It went quiet. The grass stopped growing and lay mostly still, looking like something right out of the African savanna or something. Sam got to her knees and Danny made contact with the ground and struggled to keep his matter close. He'd _never_ had that hard of a time before. Tucker's head could barely be seen above the tops of the grass, but he seemed to have stabilized, as well.

Danny offered a hand to Sam, but she ignored it and stood on her own. The forest of grass swayed as Tucker emerged, breathing hard.

"What. The. Heck," Tucker said, putting his hands on his knees. Danny would probably have used a stronger word.

"Magic just went… wild, I don't know!" Sam looked over at the old, wizened tree. "The tree doesn't look any different."

"Sam, why would that matter?" Danny asked calmly, trying to slow his heart rate so he could turn back to human.

With an exasperated look, Sam turned to the tree. "Magic went weird. That means something is happening to the Soul. If that tree was the Soul, it wouldn't just be standing there looking fine!"

"I thought you said this was the right tree!" Tucker straightened and put his hat back on.

"It is!" Sam argued. "I don't know what that _means_, though!"

Another fireball emerged from the tree, though it wasn't flying quite as fast as the others, as if the tree was reeling, too. The fire landed in the grass, but it didn't seem that the plants caught on fire.

"We've done what we can for right now," Sam continued heavily. "We should go back, see what happened to everyone else. If all that happened to _us_, the rest of the town must be in chaos."

"We can't give up," Danny tried to say. "If this is the right tree, there has to be something we can do to find the Soul!"

Sam just shrugged, looking tired and frustrated. "_A declaration must thou speak - Deliverance! and thou art weak._ We tried that, Danny. Tucker almost had it, but… I dunno, the tree is picky or something."

"Maybe you can ask your grandma again," Tucker suggested. He sighed. "I want a shower."

"I guess we can take a minute to think about it." Danny looked back at the tree. He'd been so sure that this was going to work. Something was right, he could feel that when Sam pointed out that this tree was different, but something was wrong, too.

As they walked towards the lights of town, Danny couldn't help but think they'd missed something big. The riddle didn't seem to be much help, but it was the only lead they had. Danny sighed and followed his friends back to the street. There was Ms. Wells, looking frazzled even as she reminded Danny that he hadn't actually turned back to human yet. He winced and did so.

There was a lot going on, since even those people who had no idea magic existed knew that there was _something_ happening. There's been some damage, and plenty of car crashes, but it didn't seem like anybody was seriously hurt, thank heaven. Just… scared, confused, and banged up a little.

Tucker went straight to his house, which really wasn't too far away. On their way towards their own homes, Sam and Danny passed a girl sitting on the curb whose arm looked scraped up from a fall. He thought he recognized her from the middle school nearby. Sam sat next to her and took a moment to heal her arm, using the same twirly-finger motion that she'd used on Tucker earlier. The girl smiled, but continued to sit there as Sam and Danny walked away.

Instead of heading straight home, Sam went to her grandma's smaller house, waving at Danny as he continued on his way. His feet hurt, his shoulders ached, and he had dust in his eyes. Even still… Danny had definitely been spooked by the wild magic thing. What if it happened again, while his parents were home? He couldn't keep anything a secret, then.

So Danny turned around and took a different path back to the tree. Maybe he could do something himself.

* * *

**Next:** Danny tries the tree again, alone this time.

Hello, friends! This chapter was kind of hard to write, geesh. But I did it! (And cyroclastic - thanks for the inspiration to write something cool like this! Glad you like it!)


	7. Danny Talks to Himself

**Previously: **Magic went painfully, confusingly wild. The trio failed to get the tree to reveal its secrets. Danny didn't want to go home, just in case magic went weird again and his parents were home. So he headed back to the tree.

* * *

Danny sighed and bonked the back of his head against the tree a few times. It had been at least an hour since he'd woken up from a nap of indeterminate length. It was still nighttime, so he hadn't slept _that_ long, at least. And he still didn't have any ideas.

The tree was tolerating him, now. Danny had just needed to wait patiently for a few minutes at the edge of the clearing, and it had gotten tired of spitting fire at him. Eventually. After enduring another _really uncomfortable _period of wild magic where his literal matter made a break for Mars (or, more realistically, the moon), Danny waded through the sea of tall grass and sat at the base of the tree. It hadn't spoken to him or anything. Stars winked above them. Danny thought it was a good sign that the tree stopped trying to kill him, but honestly, ignoring him wasn't really doing it, either.

"Come _on_, tree," Danny said in exasperation. "I know you've got something to hide."

There wasn't any answer. Of course not. It was a tree. Just a stupid tree, made of wood and leaves and maybe fire for sap, who knew.

"I get it," Danny continued. There was no harm in talking to the tree. It was like talking to himself, but a little less pathetic, since it was a magical tree that might actually be able to hear him. "I get it. You're protecting something important. The Soul is _really_ important, from what people have told me. It - or is it she? - stops the sheer amount of magic from destroying everything, including reality. So yeah, you protecting it is a good thing. I do the same thing, kinda, protecting people from Crescentians."

Danny sighed and bumped his head again, a little more forcefully than he needed to. "Is it that? Are you ignoring me because I don't technically belong here? Would you have opened up to Sam or Tucker by now? I know that most people don't think I should stay here. But what was I supposed to do? Leave my family and friends and school and home? Besides, the portal would have stayed open and Cressies still would be coming through.

"The difference is that I'm here to stop them. I want to keep Amity Park safe. I know that sometimes I wreck things. That bulldozer _wasn't_ my fault, no matter what the stupid news anchor said, but fine, I concede the fact that I've knocked down more than a couple walls. And Val's house. That really wasn't on purpose. But I could've stopped it, if I'm being honest. I'm just not good enough. Even if I take care of the Cressies, I do leave a lot of damage behind - on accident, but still.

"What good am I, if I wreck someone's house? That's not protecting them, that's voiding their insurance! I can't do this. I'm not good enough." Danny scowled, and was silent for a moment.

"But, you know what?" he eventually said. "I want to be. I want to get better, because if _I_ can't protect Amity, who could? And tree, you're stopping me from doing everything I can. So, just… please, do _something_."

Danny waited, as if for the tree to answer. He didn't get one, of course. It was still just a tree. Talking had helped a bit, though he didn't get any amazing, revelatory ideas from it. With a little frustration, but more disappointment, Danny stood up and began to walk away.

The tree creaked.

His heart rate soaring at the unexpected sound, Danny whipped around to see the branches of the old tree twisting. They arranged themselves, leaves rustling, in a sort of fan shape, with one distinct break in the pattern. There, nestled in the cradle of ranches as thick as Danny's waist, was a little carved wooden box.

_A declaration must thou speak - Deliverance! and thou art weak._ The words to the poem played again in Danny's mind. Had he done that? Not more so than Tucker had tried, earlier. What was different about him, then?

Hesitantly, Danny lowered his defensive arm and took a step forward. The tree didn't react. Even when Danny reached carefully towards the box's lid, the tree didn't do anything.

Danny touched the metal latch. It was warm, almost hot like a seatbelt left in the sun. The dark wood of the box didn't look burned at all, though. There was a sort of seal carved into the lid - a tree branch, a hammer, and what was probably a magic wand laid side-by-side. Danny recognized the branch and hammer from Amity Park's crest, oddly enough.

Just as he was about to flip the lid open, Danny paused. This could be a trap, or not meant for him. Maybe he should go get -

_Take it,_ said an amused female voice, sounding like faint bells in the wind. Danny jumped, but there was nobody around. The sound hadn't even really been a sound, more like a foreign thought. It didn't come again.

So Danny lifted the box's lid slowly.

The box wasn't as shallow as it appeared from the outside. It was deep, sunk far into the tree's trunk. Inside sat a rolled-up parchment, looking as fresh as the day it was made. Danny felt a distinctly magical coolness in his fingers as he gently pulled out the document. He was a little confused - the tree was hiding the Soul, right? Was the parchment the Soul? Seemed a little weird.

Danny unrolled the document, and the last part of the poem rose in his mind.

_And only by thus may you find A way to tread the path that's blind._

"A _way_ to tread the path," he whispered. The inked lines on the parchment clearly outlined an older, smaller version of Amity Park. As he watched, though, the lines seemingly drew themselves, filling in highways and suburbs and the larger buildings of downtown. Last of all, a splotch of red on the corner lazily wound down streets and over the river before settling in an X over a particular section of forest, across the town. There was a small drawing of a cave there, one Danny didn't recognize.

It was, quite clearly, a map to the Soul.

Not feeling his fatigue any longer, Danny smiled. After one more moment of looking at the map, he rolled it back up and jumped into the air.

Then back down, thinking of how he'd fall if magic went weird again. He elected to run, instead, aiming towards Tucker's house first. They didn't have time to waste.

* * *

**Next:** Danny takes the map back to his friends, who convince him to take a shower and decide on a course of action.

Hello! :) I am a week late with this chapter, apologies. The computer was acting up and I just didn't have any time! I decided that posting a week late but with _two_ chapters was better than rushing one... I got a single, shorter chapter edited, just not as thoroughly as I would have preferred. We'll see if the next one will be ready to go for tomorrow. It's still Friday where I'm at so this counts! Thank you for your wonderful comments, and I'll see you next week, if not tomorrow. :)

PS: I am posting this on AO3 now as well, under the same username.


	8. The Cave

(Sorry this is a few days late!)

**Previously:** Danny managed to procure a weird map thing from the fire tree late at night.

* * *

The sun broke hot and bright over the treeline when Danny emerged from the forest. He caught sight of the white vinyl of the fence that bordered Tucker's house's backyard, gleaming like a floodlight in the sun, even before he cleared the trees. Blinds shuddered in an upstairs window, presumably Tucker himself seeing that Danny was there.

Danny was finding it a bit difficult to walk, due to the uneven ground and his feet sometimes deciding to just not exist. He stumbled a few times, using the overbearing radiance from the white fence as a beacon, and eventually decided to fly until he got within view of the street. Then he just pretended to walk while hovering. It was convincing, right?

"Were you up _all night?_" Tucker asked, slipping through the gate at the side of his yard as Danny got there.

Danny shrugged. "I slept. A little bit. I'm fine. Your text said that there was a Cressie down on Salt Street."

"Yeah, but there wasn't much about it on the news other than Ms. Wells taking care of it," Tucker replied with a yawn. He hopped a little, his backpack coming farther up onto his shoulders as they walked down between houses towards the street. "All the magic stuff happening is kinda taking priority."

With an acquiescent nod, Danny kept walking. Like it was some long-ingrained habit (it was), they were headed towards Sam's house. He was annoyed that Ms. Wells _had_ to take care of it, but he did recognize that the quest to help the Soul took precedence, as much as it frustrated him. With a conscious effort, Danny dropped the few inches he'd risen with emotion, though he didn't go all the way so as to actually be walking. It would be less suspicious to move an inconsistent amount with every step than to be seen with his leg half-buried in the sidewalk as he fell flat on his face.

"You said that you went back to that tree," Tucker began, changing the subject. He pointed with a hand that had too many band-aids on it at the roll of parchment that Danny still held clenched in his hand. "Is that what was there? How did you get it?"

"Can we get to Sam's first? I don't feel like explaining it twice." Danny eyed the band-aids, signs of animalistic scratches underneath. There were some on his head, too. Wild magic sucked.

"As long as I get the info," Tucker said without resentment, not noticing or trying not to notice Danny's probably-not-subtle inspection.

"Thanks." They kept walking, or in Danny's case, floating, the sun getting higher and brighter as it rose.

After the normal amount of time, they stopped in front of the enormous gate up to Sam's mansion.

"Ring the doorbell," Danny whispered to Tucker, bumping his arm.

"I don't wanna ring the doorbell, the Mansons are scary. You ring the doorbell."

"They like you better! You should press the button."

"They _so_ do not like me better, you'd have a better chance of - "

The gate opened, and a very wet-looking Sam stepped out. "My parents would _not_ kill you for ringing the intercom."

"Why are you all wet?" Danny asked.

Sam scowled and turned to wring out her short black hair. A surprising amount of water gushed onto the cool sidewalk. "None of my magic has been working right since last night," she replied. "The hot water spell didn't work until thirty seconds ago, and I'm not sure I want to try to get dry and have all my clothes shrink while I'm still in them."

"At least it wasn't _cold_ water," Tucker pointed out.

Sam stuck her tongue out and took off her sweater to wring it out. "You both need a shower."

"I took one."

"_Danny_ needs a shower."

"I'm fine."

"You're a teenage boy who's been out in the forest for days. You stink. You need a shower."

Danny rolled his eyes. "What about the Soul?"

"Shower first," Sam said, stomping her boots. They squeaked and gushed out water as she tied her sweater around her waist. She swore at the water and her boots. "These are leather! Stupid magic. Come on, let's go head to your house."

"Sam, wait," Danny reached out with the hand that wasn't holding the parchment and snagged her soaked shoulder. "What if magic does that thing again? What if my parents see more than just me? That's why I avoided going home in the first place."

With a sigh, Sam stopped and turned, hands on her hips. "I'm almost one hundred percent certain that your parents are currently running around the city, perhaps unaware that you didn't go home last night, investigating everything vaguely magical with 'ghost sensors.' They won't be home."

"You don't know that for sure," Danny tried. "I'm _floating two whole inches off the ground_, Sam. That's not something you can ignore."

"I didn't notice," Sam shot back.

Tucker piped up. "You once convinced your parents that you had entered an epic cosplay contest, and all they did was recommend a better hazmat suit company."

"Whose side are you on?"

"It'll be fast," Sam said with finality. "Come on, we can't waste time."

Danny sighed. He could only hope that nothing in his house would blare an alarm at all the haywire magic, and that his parents really _were_ so distracted they wouldn't notice. Not that it hadn't happened before. Reluctantly, Danny followed Sam and Tucker down into the warehouse district where his house was located. ("This way, we won't bother any neighbors!" exclaimed his dad loudly as they were unloading boxes. Jazz rolled her eyes and pointed out that no buses ran this way, so they'd need a car to get to school.)

Not relying _too_ much on intangibility, just in case it decided to fail halfway through a wall, Danny snuck into the house. It was empty, and his friends had come inside while he was checking it out. With a roll of his eyes, Danny waved them into their preferred hangout spot - his room - and entered the bathroom for the first time in a few days.

Well. Either he'd gotten a tan or that was dirt. Judging from the lack of sunlight he'd seen until that morning, it was most likely dirt. Danny's hypothesis was confirmed when he had to soap up the loofah not twice but _three times_ just to get all the dirt off. He rushed despite that, though, knowing that every moment wasted in the shower was a moment that the Soul still needed them.

Danny probably set some kind of record with how short that shower was, at least compared to his normal showers. In almost no time at all, his not-quite-dry skin was soaking through a clean shirt as he locked the door.

In the silence between buildings, Danny, Sam, and Tucker gathered around the parchment.

"And that's from the tree?" Sam said.

Danny nodded. "Yeah, it is. I'm not sure what happened, but I sat there for a few hours and talked to the tree. I guess something I said was just right, because it opened and there was a box and this was inside."

"Don't tell me it's another riddle," Tucker complained. "I can't handle any more mental acrobatics in linguistics. Please just give me a sudoku puzzle."

"It's a map," Danny said with a smile, unrolling the parchment. It was just as he'd left it, except more on the map had labeled itself, and the red X had vanished. Danny scowled in confusion.

Taking the map from Danny, Tucker squinted at the spider-thin lines of ink. "Dude, are you sure this is to the Soul?"

"It had a big red X on it before, somewhere around there," Danny answered, a note of desperation in his voice as he pointed to the clump of forest symbols. "Also the words weren't there before."

"_The Soul Infinity,_" Sam read out loud. "Looks like a title."

Tucker made a sound. "I don't see it anywhere on here."

"It was there, I promise!"

"I believe you, but it's not there now," Sam said. She poked the map, and the lines she'd touched rippled with color, but they didn't change, and nothing stood out.

With a twisted mouth, Tucker lowered the map. "I don't know, man. We don't need to go to the…" he glanced at the map, "the Silent Forge, whatever that is. We need to get to the Soul of Amity Park."

Those last four words echoed, though Tucker hadn't spoken more loudly or anything. "Soul of Amity Park. _Soul of Amity Park_." It was like they were magical keywords.

The wind picked up. Danny looked down, only to see a new, golden dot on the map. Tucker lifted it up, and they watched as a line extended from the dot - which quite clearly marked where they were standing at the moment - to about the place where Danny had seen the red X before. The X reappeared, in gold, and the parchment seemed to _pulse_.

"Uh… guys?" Tucker sounded nervous as he lifted the map, higher and higher. No, Danny realized after Tucker's feet left the ground. He wasn't lifting it, _it_ was lifting _him_.

"Guys!"

"Hold on!" Danny said. He pulled Sam in and snatched at Tucker's shoe. His hand stuck, as in, he couldn't pull it off, and Sam seemed to stick to him, too. The map continued to rise, and the wind blew harder around them. If Danny hadn't recently had a haircut, he wouldn't have been able to see at all. They kept going up.

"What the heck is happe - " Sam's words were drowned out in a scream as the map jumped forward without warning, dragging Tucker - and by extension, Sam and Danny - with it.

Danny was pretty used to flying, but this was something else. It was smoother, for one, and instead of flying, Danny was being dragged from his arm and pushed by the wind. The map, or whatever it was, seemed to be almost creating its own wind current, as crazy as that sounded.

After blasting past the park and seeing people look up at them, Danny let his invisibility seep through him and his friends, hopefully protecting the secret of magic, as much as it still _could_ be protected. They continued to climb upwards, shouting and screaming. The three of them followed the freeway for a few seconds, then over to the river. From such a distance, Danny could almost see the thin lines of ink from the map outlining the living city. Just before they dropped in altitude, Danny picked out the vague spot where he'd remembered seeing the red and gold Xs.

The map landed gently, the unnatural wind gradually fading before disappearing altogether. Sam's legs shook, and she grabbed a tree branch to stay standing. Danny took several deep breaths, his heart pounding, and watched as the map flew from Tucker's hand, rolled itself up, and stuck itself in his ever-present backpack. The zipper closed behind it, and there was quiet.

"That's where the Soul is, then," Danny said, his voice coming out quietly in near-reverence. They were facing a hill, one side cut out but the opening covered in ivy. There was a peaceful stillness in the air. Birds chirped, and wind rustled leaves. The sun filtered through the foliage with a comforting kind of light, the brunt of the heat taken by the forest.

"It's got to be," Sam said, her eyes wide. "I can feel it." Her hair was blown about and still looked a little wet, but she wasn't trying to fix it. All her attention was focused on the cave.

Tucker and Danny fell in next to her, Danny in the middle. There was something attractive about the gaping opening, and the feeling only multiplied when Sam brushed the ivy aside and they had full view of the cave.

Danny noticed several things at once. The first was the smell - it was some kind of combination of petrichor and the lightning-like scent he'd come to associate with magic. There was also the stench of gasoline underneath that, which definitely didn't belong.

The next thing that Danny saw was a girl propped up against the side of the cave. Her eyes were closed, but she was breathing, and her skin looked gray rather than brown. Valerie, of all people. Danny felt something rather like an emotional punch in the gut, seeing her there. Of course she'd found it before them. She didn't look so good. A cloud of colored vapor wound a meandering but urgent path from her to -

The Soul of Amity Park itself.

Danny had kind of expected the Soul to be glowing, whatever it was. He'd imagined wiping a few grains of dirt from a beautiful fountain, water or ichor or something beginning to flow and give off a soft golden light. He'd pictured taking Windex and a soft cloth to a glass orb, hovering above a nest of vines. This chunk of crystal, rooted in the earth as if it would even stay put through the end of the world, was polished and faceted with a million different colors that never clashed. It was somehow more impressive than Danny's mental image. But it didn't glow.

There wasn't dirt, not even a layer of dust. It wasn't cracked or bleeding or anything. A faint shimmering _something_ inside swirled. Dirt obviously wasn't the problem.

On instinct and without really noticing, Danny had grabbed both Sam's and Tucker's hands. He tightened his grip.

The fourth thing that Danny noticed, after the smell, an unconscious Valerie, and the Soul, was the _thing_ on top of the Soul. White and chrome, it stood on three legs of its own, feet digging into the soil and patchy grass. The main body of the rig was hovering a few inches above the crystal, but little wires snakes down from it and touched every tiny facet, attached by white stickers. There was a loud, gas-guzzling generator in the back of the cave, wires and a tube running from it to the mechanical thing.

Sam and Tucker squeezed his hands back. He felt them look at each other, then at him, worrying what his reaction would be.

Because -

There was -

There was a -

The _thing _on the Soul, causing it problems, had a lime-green F printed on it. F for Fenton.

* * *

**Next: **The trio deal with the thing.

I know, I'm really descriptive. Apologies for the late update, there was a wedding. This is a slightly longer than normal chapter, though, so hope you enjoyed it! There are two chapters left, plus a prologue that will probably publish after this story is over separately. As always, let me know what you think!


	9. The Soul Infinity

**Previously:** Danny and company are whisked away to a lovely little cave, where they find Valerie, the Soul, and something else.

* * *

The _thing _on the Soul, causing it problems, had a lime-green F printed on it. F for Fenton.

Danny felt his face go pale. What did his parents think they were doing? Making it _better?_ They most likely didn't even realize that they had caused the magical uproar, that all of those problems were their fault.

They stood there for a moment longer, frozen. Danny noticed that little lines of magic had begun to form, connecting each of the three of them to the thing on the Soul, just like the one between it and Valerie. He didn't know what the rig was supposed to do, but it looked like it was draining magic, whatever its original purpose. Underneath the rumble of the generator, there was an almost-inaudible sound of screaming.

Breaking the spell, Sam reached out a hand. A faint glow started at her fingertips. There was an ugly grinding noise, then the glow was snuffed, and Sam pulled back her hand as if stung.

"Can we turn it off?" Tucker said, speaking loudly over the noise. "Like, unplug the generator or something?"

"I tried that."

Sam released Danny's hand and rushed to Valerie, who'd opened her eyes and was trying to stand. Her voice was quiet, but still carried over the generator. Sam's dark clothing contrasted oddly with the unnatural gray tone of Valerie's skin.

"I tried everything short of touching the Soul," Valerie continued, clutching Sam's arm and getting to her feet with the shorter girl's help. "I felt the rumbling from the generator and decided to check it out, but as soon as I touched the generator, it felt like the magic was doing weird things again, only worse. And now I don't have much magic at all." She waved her hand through the line connecting her, dispersing the vapor for a moment. It reformed.

Danny bit his lip. He'd offer his help but he didn't think that Valerie would appreciate it. She really didn't look so good. Glancing over, Danny saw that Tucker seemed a little sick, too. Sam looked tired under her makeup. The generator kicked on, filling the small cave with an even louder sound and a stronger smell of gasoline. Muffled by the noise, the screaming sound intensified. He squeezed his eyes shut as he felt magic flare again, his hand unable to touch anything even as he heard sounds of distress from his friends. The wild magic was stronger here, since this was obviously the source of it.

The episode passed. The sounds retreated, both the screaming and the rumbling. Danny took a deep breath and opened his eyes. Things really weren't good.

"What if we just knock it over or something?" Danny asked. "We've got to stop it."

"I know," Sam called back, "but I'm afraid that if someone touches it, they'll lose all their magic permanently." Yeah, that was logical. Danny could see the magic leaking from them - galaxy-like clouds from Sam, silvery threads from Tucker, brown and green from Valerie, and from him, pieces of him. Already, his fingers were mostly invisible.

"It looks like those wires are the biggest problem," Tucker said, standing up from where he'd fallen. "At this point, I don't know if disabling the generator will actually do anything, but if we could disconnect that thing from the Soul…" He trailed off.

"Then that's what we've got to do," Danny finished. From five feet away, he inspected the rig. There were maybe six wires connecting it to various facets on the Soul. He'd just need to stay conscious long enough to take off those white stickers, and hopefully, that would be the end of it.

Valerie coughed. "Getting that close might finish you." She and Sam made their slow way back towards the entrance of the cave.

"Yeah, dude," Tucker added, "You can't seriously be thinking about it. Your magic is _you,_ look. I can't even see your hands anymore."

For a moment, Danny didn't answer. He had the knowledge and the means to fix this. Maybe he would suffer, sure, but everyone else was already suffering. The wild magic was affecting everyone in town, whether they knew it or not. Being Crescentian was pretty cool, yeah. Danny appreciated the opportunities he'd had to help people. They didn't all like him - Danny glanced at Valerie - but that didn't mean he wanted them to have to endure so much pain. Even the other Cressies, they could be redeemed someday.

Danny had his mind made up. If he lost his magic and went back to being normal human Danny, that was fine. He wouldn't set off his parents' security systems anymore. And if it took more than just his magic… well, the world would be fine. Magic would go back to normal. That was better than leaving and not doing anything about it. Ms. Wells or not, Danny had tried to prepare himself in case something like this ever happened.

"Look, I don't need your permission," Danny said.

Valerie interrupted. "Look, Danny, whatever I said, I don't want you to _die!_"

"I'm not gonna die." Danny didn't sound convinced, even to himself. He winced. "Look, _someone's_ gotta do it. It might as well be me."

"I'm going to officially lodge a complaint and say that this is a bad idea," Sam said. She was still holding Valerie up, but looked like she wanted to try and stop Danny from getting any closer to the Soul. "I retain the right to say that I told you so."

Danny almost smiled and took a step forward.

Tucker lunged, as if to grab Danny's arm, but his hand passed right through. There were claws on that hand, Danny noticed. Things were getting worse. Danny rather thought that he wouldn't be able to make himself tangible if he tried, at this point.

"Don't," Tucker tried.

"I can't _not_ do it," Danny said. "Look, it's going to hit again, and who knows what will happen. I have one shot at this, and I'm not going to stand by and do nothing." He did his best to speak evenly. He didn't know if it worked. This was freaking him out, but he didn't know what else to do. It was the only option.

There was no response from anyone. Danny took the opportunity to walk forward, though it kind of felt more like drifting rather than actually walking. It was weird, he could actually feel his matter being pulled away from him. It was a really strange sensation. Danny reached out with an invisible hand to tug at a wire. The sticker holding it to the Soul peeled off, slower than Danny wanted. A beeping noise added itself to the cacophony. He ignored it and reached for another wire.

The pulling got stronger, and Danny felt his legs disappearing, too, but not like they normally did. This was pins and needles, if the pins were being jabbed inches into his flesh and pulling out bloody chunks. But Danny's hands, though shaking, were still going.

_Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep! BEEP! BEEEEEP!_

"I know, I know, I'm getting it off," Danny muttered to the beeping noise. He pulled at another sticker, and another. The process was going oh so slowly, but Danny couldn't move any faster than he was. His arms refused to move more, like he was swimming in honey. He distantly heard his friends behind him, but he couldn't make out what they were saying.

There had actually been about ten wires connecting the machine to the Soul. They hung now, still bouncing from being released.

Danny grabbed the machine with both hands and lifted. He didn't know where the strength was coming from, as most of him was invisible or just plain gone, but he managed to get two of the three legs out of the ground. With a groan that Danny wasn't sure was his, the machine tipped over and fell.

For a moment, it was all calm. Danny could see his hands again, and looking back, Valerie's skin had almost returned to its normal color. He smiled in relief. It was gone, and he was still there. Everything was going to be okay.

The generator rumbled.

* * *

**Next:** Fallout.

I'm not really a fan of this scene, myself, but it had to be written. I feel like I really stink at emotions and action and... ha. I guess today's just not a very good writing day for me. But I finished this! On time! (It's Friday evening where I am.) Sorry it's not very long. Anyway, thank you again for your comments, and remember to leave one today!

The next scene might be the last, or there might be two more, depending on how long it turns out and how much I can get in there. After that, there's a prologue I'm hoping to finish up and publish soon as a second story. Watch for that.

See you next week!


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